Keepsake
by Dark Caustic
Summary: It was three days after Sam died that Bobby finally managed to convince him to bury the body. It's seven days later that Sam shows up at Dean's motel room door.
1. Chapter One

It was three days after Sam died that Bobby finally managed to convince him to bury the body.

Which was a compromise in and of itself. Bobby would've rather given Sam a proper hunter's funeral – pyre and all. Let the boy finally rest for good.

But that was too… permanent, Dean had decreed, much to Bobby's discomfort. Dean had pressed on that he needed _something_ left, a place to go and visit and know that Sam was _there_ even if he wasn't really there at all.

A poor comparison, he knew, but Bobby had once buried his wife, so that was a sentiment he could understand. Sometimes, he still took flowers to her on Sundays.

Besides, Dean had nothing left – Mary long burned up and John traded his last few years for his oldest son and now Sam.

He couldn't find it in him to press the matter any further, so they buried Sam in a lonely field in South Dakota. The kind of place that is almost fictional in it's serenity, especially in the setting sun. Marked his body with a wooden cross and a heavy slab of uncut alabaster so Dean could find his way back long after the wood rotted away.

As all things rot away.

And thus, Sam rested.

Bobby asked Dean to stay for a while – as much for the older man's sanity than for Dean's comfort.

But Dean wouldn't have any of it. Said he only knew one way to deal with his grief – the open road, a box of cassette tapes and Gentleman Jack.

There comes a time to let go of the boy you raised, Bobby knew. And that time had come.

So he let Dean know the door was always open and bid him well.

**XxX**

Dean does what he knows how to do – he hunts. Anything dark in the night is his for the taking.

He leaves a slew of dead creatures in his wake, thankful souls and soiled hotel rooms.

It's _hard_ to be the one left behind.

So hard, in fact, that the first time Sam comes back, Dean is in such a haze of alcohol he opens the door and lets him right on in.

"It's a small time witch," Sam says, sitting at the kitchen table and leafing through Dean's notes.

"What?" Dean asks, pulling a seat across from him, bottle still in hand.

"That witness you interviewed?" Sam says, pulling out Dean's crooked handwriting. "Melissa? She's a small-time witch. Pissed off at her ex-girlfriend. I bet if you just gave her a good shakedown, she'd knock it off."

"Fucking hate witches, man," Dean replies.

"What are you going to do? Kill her?"

"Maybe," Dean says, taking a drag right from the bottle.

"You can't," Sam says.

"Why not? Who's going to stop me? _You_?"

Sam is gone as quickly as he came.

Dean falls asleep with his clothes on, notes lying across the table, the chairs, the floor.

In the morning, he convinces himself it was a dream.

Easier that way.

He tells the witch to knock it off, makes her burn her alter and her books and promise to be good.

Then he heads west out into the sunset.

**XxX**

Bobby calls him and he doesn't answer for three days.

When he does, he doesn't really know what to say. He confirms that he's still alive in monosyllabic words. That's all he can muster.

He drives for six days. Rests on the seventh.

Makes a drunken call to Cassie.

Leaves her four messages, in two of which he may or may not be crying.

He can't remember.

She calls back once, asks him what's wrong.

He tells her, "Sammy's dead. My brother. He's dead."

She says, "I'm sorry, Dean." And invites him to visit her.

But something about the way she says it twists in Dean's belly like the words are hollow and the implication is: _don't come see me, I can't handle you, I just don't know what else to say._

Which is for all the best, Dean decides, deleting her number out of his phone.

She wouldn't replace Sam anyways.

**XxX**

Dean has the worst hangover of his life in Tulsa, sweating it out on top of the scratchy sheets in a Super 8.

But Sam's fingers are cool and calm, skirting over his skin at his hairline. He's blurry – like Dean's looking up at him from the bottom of a pool.

"Why are you doing this?" Sam asks. At least his voice is clear.

Dean manages to catch his wrist. Holds it _tight tight tight_ and presses the palm of Sam's hand to his face.

Sam just lets him. Cups Dean's cheek reverently.

Dean can almost feel his heartbeat.

"I don't know how, Sam. I don't," he says, and there they are again – the fucking tears that won't let him be. Tears that cloud the road and his future and his mind.

The bed shifts as Sam slides in next to him. "It's okay, Dean. It's going to be okay."

"No," Dean gasps. "You're gone and Dad's gone and I don't want to, anymore, Sammy, I don't."

"Please don't say that," Sam says – sounds as wrecked as Dean feels – puts his arm around Dean's shoulder and manhandles him till Dean is half lying in his lap. "Please," he begs, hand now petting through Dean's hair. "It's not your time yet. It'll be all right."

Dean comes out of that hangover two days later, still dehydrated but now he can keep food down and sit up for more than minutes at a time.

Sam nursed him through it. Fed him soup and brought him water and kept saying things like - "Remember that time in Newport the bartender chick you were trying to get with tried to surprise you by waiting for you in your room but you came in covered in monster goo and blood and she screamed and you had to haul ass out of town?"

Dean managed to smile a little at that – sure, he didn't get laid like he'd wanted, but the look on her face had been fucking _priceless_.

Or Sam would just smooth back his hair and hum "Hey Jude" and _that_, well, that really hurt.

And helped.

And now Dean is alone again.

Naturally.

**XxX**

There is a little girl in New Orleans who's somehow managed to get herself possessed.

Dean and the local priest manage to tie her to a chair and start in on the Latin.

She screams high and mighty, eyes gone black and glassy. Hisses under the spray of holy water.

The priest is paper pale but he's a trooper – recites the words right along with Dean.

They win – for once. It's a good one. The girl has a broken wrist and is going to need some serious therapy – but she's _intact_ and _alive_ and that's a win.

But Dean's shaking when he gets back to the Impala.

Because just before the demon became a gulf of black smoke, it turned it's oiled eyes on him and said – in a voice like grinding muscle and tearing flesh – "_He's burning, Dean. Your brother. He's burning in hell_."

Dean gets as far as the edge of town before he needs to pull over and throw up. Bits and pieces of hamburgers and too-many coffee cups.

Eventually, he gets back behind the wheel. Cold and clammy.

_Demons lie_, he tells himself and cranks _When The Levee Breaks_.

**XxX**

Sam visits him in the backroom of a sketchy lounge in Detroit.

Dean's got a girl on his lap – she called herself _Tough Cookie_ and, yeah, a little too much Anne Rice on the brain but she's a little slip of a thing in a red and black dress and lips that taste like honey so Dean could care less if she wants to pretend to be a character from a vampire novel.

Dean's riding high – weed. Hasn't done that shit since right after high school. But it's good. Thrums in him, makes the music feel like a cat brushing against his legs – warm and alive.

The girl is panting, hot and heavy and ready and hell, she might go for a quickie right _here_, Dean thinks, running his hand over her spine. Thinking about how he can span almost the entirety of her back with his fingers and how he couldn't do that with Sammy.

Which is, of course, the exact moment Sam clears his throat and smiles at Dean from across the table.

"What are you drinking?" he asks, motioning toward Dean's empty glass – feigning ignorance of the lady sprawled in Dean's lap – before calling over the waiter and ordering shots of Fireball Whisky (the bastard) and a couple of beers.

Dean has a moment where he wants to turn Tough Cookie's head toward Sam and ask her if she can see him to – so he can _know_ of Sam is actually haunting him or if his little brother is just a figment of his bereavement interacting with all the shit kicking through his system, but his heart tinges painfully at the thought of her saying _no_, so he doesn't.

He takes the shots from the waiter and pounds down all three. He wakes up alone and fuzzyheaded the next morning, but someone's left Aspirin and a glass of water on his bedside table.

**XxX**

He visits Bobby the next week.

Because he really should give his liver a break and because the old man calls and leaves him messages at least once a day.

Dean's afraid he's going to have a coronary from worrying so hard.

Bobby hugs him and opens his mouth to say _I'm sorry about Sam_ for the millionth time but Dean beats him to the punch.

"Don't say it," he pleads.

Bobby's no stranger to loss – those are words he can't fight. So he just nods.

"You hungry?" he asks. "I've got left over barbeque," he offers. "Or I can whip something else up."

Dean follows him inside, shaking his head. "I'm not hungry."

"You're turning into skin and bones, Dean. That's not what Sam would want."

"Don't tell me what Sam would want," Dean snaps at him. Scaring himself more than his old friend. "Just," Dean pauses. His lip trembles. It's still too much, and being here in this stupid fucking house where he spent summers with his fawn of a little brother feels like losing the whole world somehow. Like the last twist of the knife. "I can't," he admits. "I can't, Bobby."

"It's okay, son," Bobby says. More of a father than his own father ever was and pulls Dean into a hug.

That's when Dean cracks. Finally. Really. Lets himself sob himself dry into the rough flannel of Bobby's shirt, and Bobby doesn't say anything. Doesn't tell him to stop, doesn't coo or hush him.

Just lets him hurt.

What a gift that is.

**XxX**

Dean spends a few days rebuilding cars in Bobby's junkyard for the repetitive motion of it. For the simple joy that cars are something he _can_ fix.

Because getting in the headspace of fixing cars keeps everything else at bay. Lets him dismantle all his feelings and lock them back into their component boxes.

He eats when Bobby brings him food and talks shop with him.

They don't mention Sam or hunting or the steady influx of beer bottles in the trashcan.

His fourth day there – Dean finally cracks and beats the shit out of 1959 Ford F100 he was _so close_ to having up and running.

Bobby watches him from a distance. Watches his muscles working as he rips the bumper from the frame with a crowbar and then smashes the hell out its one intact window. He dents all the wheel wells and knocks out the headlights. Pulls the wires right out from their bare sockets. Tugs a door off its hinges and works a tear in the upholstery open until the inside of the cab is bleeding foam.

Bobby goes out and asks him if frozen pizza is okay for dinner – it's all he has left till he drives into town tomorrow.

Dean doesn't even remember having a voice and lets himself be led inside and sat at the table.

Bobby talks for two.

**XxX**

Bobby stays up later than he meant translating some old Japanese ghost story into English. Never know what can end up being helpful on a hunt.

When he emerges from the library, Dean is still sitting up on the couch, watching the fire die. His eyes are red rimmed. Takes Bobby a moment to realize it's booze and not tears.

"You okay, son?" Bobby has to ask the stupid question. Can't help himself.

Dean looks up at him from where he's sprawled on the couch. "Remind me that demons lie, Bobby."

"Demons lie," Bobby says automatically like _no shit_. "That's what they do. They're lying bastards. What happened to you, Dean?"

Dean stares back down at the whiskey in his glass. "My brother died," he says so matter-of-factly that Bobby's heart breaks for the boy all over again.

Dean manages to tell him of the possessed girl. Tells him how she turned to him and said, "Said that Sam is burning in hell. As we speak." Then Dean looks at the fire like it could give up the secrets of hell to him.

Like if he listened closely enough – he could hear Sam's screams in the crackles.

Like Sam deserved hell because a demon bleed in him.

"Demons lie," Bobby says again, stronger this time now that he has something to aim his discussion at. "It could see your wound, Dean. That's all. It could see your wound and wanted to push where it hurts. That doesn't make it true. That doesn't mean that it knows where Sam is. And you and I both know that Sam was a good kid. So, no, Dean, your brother is not in hell."

"Yeah, but Bobby," Dean says.

"But what?"

"He had demon blood in him."

The fire casts the shadows long across the floor as Bobby tries to work his mouth around his answer. Finally he settles on – "Sam was bigger than a few drops of demon blood."

Dean's not so sure.

"Get some rest," Bobby orders and pats him on the shoulder. "Everything's harder at night."

**XxX**

Dean is pretending to be asleep on the couch when Bobby leaves for town the next day.

He's really biding his time so he doesn't have to explain himself.

He knows he shouldn't feel _guilty_ about going to visit – that's the whole point of giving Sam a grave – but he doesn't want to explain to Bobby that he needs to talk to his brother.

Sober.

It's a short drive out to where Sam's been laid to rest. The fields roll on out into nothing on either side. It's comforting, almost. So many years in the car, she's sort of become his favorite lullaby. Gets him right into that headspace where nothing hurts.

It hasn't been long – a month, maybe – so the wooden cross is still stark and upright in the field. The slab of alabaster brilliant white in the sun.

Dean watches his shadow puddle under his feet in the noon light. It's chilly but not cold and the air is calm and still.

He crouches there on Sam's grave, rests his palm on the stone, warmed to the touch.

"Why are you doing this to me, Sammy?" he asks.

There is a long, long silence in which the dead do not speak.

Dean closes his eyes and inhales through his nose. Reminds himself that this is _real_. Sam is really gone.

Really dead.

It's really over this time.

Funny how that can happen. How the last thing he said to Sam was some shit jab about _pie_. Fucking pie. He's not sure he'll ever be able to look at that stuff again.

How the last look Sam gave him was a bitchface before he was kidnapped by some demon monsters.

How he died quite literally in Dean's arms and there was no bringing him back.

No faith healers or reapers on a leash. Bobby pulling him off the crossroads by the back of his shirt demanding to know _what's wrong with you, Dean?_

_What's wrong with me?_ Dean had wanted to yell. What's wrong with _me?_

The gaping hole in Sam's back.

The blood on his fingers and Sam's neck ragdoll limp, lolling against his shoulder.

He wakes up at night with the echo of Sam's deadweight against him, the words still caught in his throat-

_It's not even that bad_, he had said. _It's not even that bad. I'm going to take care of you_.

Demons lie.

Sam's hand on the back of his neck is ice cold and Dean almost jumps out of his skin when he tries to leap to his feet, instead falling over the alabaster stone and ended up ass down in the dirt, looking up over six feet to the face of his younger brother.

"Shit, Dean, I'm sorry," Sam says, kneeling down beside him. He reaches out for Dean again but Dean scrambles out of his reach.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Dean screams. The wind picks up his voice and carries it far off.

Sam gets that puppy look on his face. "I thought," he says, swallows thickly. "I thought you wanted me."

"Alive," Dean says suddenly, sharply. "I wanted you alive."

"This is second best," Sam says.

The wind rustles the grass around them. Dean watches him – he still looks, well, like Sammy. Floppy hair and brown coat and long fingers and bony knees and elbows. He has to press his hands harder against the ground to keep from reaching out and pulling Sam in against him. Cause even though he knows that Sam is dead and this is an phantom, the urge is still so strong. Sam's a force that's always pulling him in.

Apparently, that doesn't change even when he's incorporeal.

"Why did you only come when I was drunk?" Dean asks.

"Because I didn't know how you'd handle me, Dean. I didn't want you to order me off."

"I'm not drunk now," Dean says that a lot meaner than he meant too.

Sam shrugs. "Yeah, but you came to me this time. You wanted to see me," he says in a way that feels like a jab. Like a little brother trying to get a rise out of him.

Dean is silent again for a little while.

Sam lets him take his time.

"How are you doing this?"

Sam stares at his own grave marker. "I don't know, exactly, but I think, I think my _abilities_ came with me."

"Demon blood abilities?" Dean asks, a small tremble in his voice. Cause, great, Sam's part demon, apparently.

Sam won't meet his eye. "Yeah."

"Does that make you…?" Dean can't finish that question.

"No, Dean, no. I'm just a ghost," he says. Way the fuck too coherent for the dead. Dean's never meet an apparition so levelheaded. Must be another side effect of being a freak, to use Sam's word.

Dean shakes his head. "I can't, Sammy. I can't. Should I have burned your bones?" he asks. And then he's crying again. Luckily, the tears are silent this time. Slow and steady, soft.

"Do you want me?" Sam asks.

What kind of question is that? Of course he wants Sam. Sam is everything.

"Sam," Dean says.

"Do you want me?" Sam asks again. An edge to his voice. A demand for an answer.

Dean looks up. Lets the last of his tears roll down his cheeks. "Yes," he says. "Yes. I want you, here. I need you here. Fuck, Sam, why'd you go and die?"

"I didn't mean to," Sam says, pulling Dean into his arms. Dean lets him this time. Sam kisses the crown of his head. "I didn't _mean_ to."

Eventually Dean gets up the courage to hold him back.

That's the fucking insane thing about ghosts – they can walk through walls and yet still feel solid to the touch.

He's cold, yes, but he still feels like Sammy, still smells like Sammy.

Well, with a lingering whiff of death. But he is dead, so Dean can't fault him for that.

Sam cradles the back of Dean's head in one massive hand and Dean shivers but finds himself trying to burrow in closer to his brother. Like if he got their skin against each other, got his brother laid out flat beneath him and all his weight holding him down, he could find the heat inside him. Because it _must_ be there somewhere because Sam's here, he's not gone –

"Do you want me?" Sam asks again, lips right next to Dean's ear. An emotion he can't identify thrums right through him. "If you want me, Dean. I won't leave, never again. Okay? I promise, Dean, I promise."

Dean doesn't answer this time. But only because he knows, somehow, that he doesn't have too.

**XxX**

It's like every other afternoon ever. Sam follows Dean back to the Impala and gets in the passenger side, folding this long limbs up against the dashboard drumming his fingers along to the beat of _Wish You Were Here_ as Dean pulls the car back onto the road.

He tries to stay looking forward at the road unwinding before them, but he has to keep glancing over to Sam in disbelief.

Sam, his brother, who was fighting death to be with him. And for the first time since Sam vanished from that diner, Dean feels like he might be okay.

Bobby is still out when they get back to his house. Sam follows Dean up the porch.

"You know he's not gonna want to see me. He'll burn my bones, Dean."

"I know," Dean says flatly. "I won't let him see you. I'll just grab my bag and we can head out." Dean moves into the living room and doesn't notice that Sam isn't behind him right away.

He pauses in the doorway, looks over his shoulder.

Sam's standing dumbfounded on the porch.

"What's the matter?" Dean asks.

"Uh," Sam says. "I think there's a salt line under Bobby's door."

_Fuck_. This isn't going to be easy.

Dean's hands are shaking when he rubs his face. This is actually happening. He opens and closes his mouth twice and finally settles on, "Go wait in the car."

He stuffs his clothes into his duffle, deposits the beer bottles he left scattered around the living room into the trash and writes Bobby a note. Tell him thanks, but he has to hit the road again. There's still evil in the world, after all.

Sam is turning a Journey tape over and over again in his hands when Dean clambers into the driver's seat.

"Dad used to play us this," Sam says. "Used to say it reminded him of Fleet Week in San Francisco."

Dean eyes him carefully. It's Sam, all right. Albeit a little gray around the edges, his lips dried and cracked and his eyes look like they're flecked with metal. But it's _Sam_.

"You wanna listen to it?" Dean offers.

Sam shakes his head. "No. I just… Memories are different now. On this side," he says.

Dean's stomach twists a little. Some voice – probably his father's – in the back of his head rears up and says _This is a bad idea, Dean Winchester_.

But… But…

The first night Sam was dead, Dean curled up around him. Like when they were children and shared the same hotel bed. When the blankets weren't thick enough and the heater was shit and Dad was heaven knows where and they needed the comfort and the heat. Sam used to fit so neatly against his body – slender little limbs and doe eyes and so much trust it gave Dean his first high. All those years ago.

He held Sammy just like that. Dead and limp and, most importantly, not his brother anymore.

If anything was the ghost – it was Sam's body. Not his soul.

That was the short and the long of it. Dean crying into the pliant collarbone of his dead brother's body and begging anything and anyone who could hear him that he would give anything to have his brother back.

And he does, now. He's missing a few pieces, sure, but nothing's perfect.

It's better than…

Well.

It's better than the days Sam laid there dead, that's for sure.

But, still, Dean doesn't want to hear the end of that thought. Doesn't want to know what death is like. All his memories of the great beyond have, thankfully, been wiped clean, and he's not about to go looking for something he's not sure he can handle.

Because, the nagging feeling at the back of his head is the sturdy reminder of his father that all ghosts go bad.

And the fact that _demon blood_ is the only thing letting Sam's soul wander freely is not exactly a comfort for Dean.

[TBC]


	2. Chapter Two

"Okay," Dean says, that evening when they are set up in some moldy room just inside Milwaukee city limits. "I guess this means ghost hunts are out of the question."

Sam chuckles a little, laid out on the bed.

Dean pulls Chinese food out of a paper bag – sweet 'n sour chicken and fried rice, couple of dumplings. He pauses as the thought occurs to him, looks back over at Sam.

"What are you attached to?" he asks.

"What?" Sam asks.

"You know, how all ghosts are attached to something physical? Something that allows them to stay on earth? What are you attached to? It can't be your body or you wouldn't be here."

"Would you believe me if I said I wasn't attached to anything?"

There's that sick feeling in his stomach again. The one that hums _demon demon demon _and makes him think of the time Meg took Sammy's body for a joyride.

"If you're a ghost," Dean says slowly. "You have to be attached to something."

Sam nods. "Okay. Would you believe me if I said I didn't know what I'm attached to?" He looks at Dean imploringly – all little brother's wide eyes, soft and tender.

That's a little easier to palate, but not by much. "No," Dean says, totally sure.

Sam laughs again, low and slow. "Okay. Not falling for any of that. I know, Dean. I'm not telling you."

Dean bristles a little. "Why not? Don't trust me?"

"No," Sam says. "I trust you. I just…," he thinks about it for a moment. "I'm new at this. I need some time to learn. Okay?"

"What? You going to go get Patrick Swayze to mentor you? Come on, Sam. I need to know so I can protect you," he says. At first, he thinks it's a lie – just something he said to coerce Sam into telling him – but as soon as it's out, he knows it's not and his mind is full of what other people – no, other_ hunters_ – will do if they get a look at Sam now.

The image of him suddenly going smoke and ash in front of Dean blazes so sharp in his mind that he has to set down his fork and cross the room to Sam in two stiff steps and pull him into his arms.

"I can't lose you again, Sammy, okay? I can't," Dean says, scaring himself with the intensity of the emotion.

"It's okay, Dean," Sam says. "I'll tell you when I'm ready. Okay?"

Dean will have to settle for that for now.

**XxX**

Obviously they can't hunt ghosts, and Dean also decides they can't hunt demons, narrowing down their cases to old gods and monsters. Cause Dean threw out witches while he was narrowing down their case options, just cause he fucking hates witches.

It's too easy to slip back into the life they had while Sam was alive.

Sam in the passenger seat - getting pissy at Dean's choice of music and his incessant need to sing along with every Metallica song – and Dean in the driver's seat, doing it just to annoy him.

It's easy. It's easy to bury the skeletons in the closet and pretend that nothing changed in Cold Oak. Pretend that they're still brothers, still hunting the old evil that murdered both their parents.

**XxX**

Dean's not sure if ghosts can get drunk or not, but that doesn't stop Sam from sipping on a beer in Oklahoma City, adam apple bobbing as he drinks, his throat pale in the low light over the bar.

He looks less dead by the day. Either that, or Dean's getting used to him, but he's pretty sure it's the former. Sam's lips are less cracked, the bags bellow his eyes less gray, his shape overall somehow more _there_, more real than Dean can describe or understand.

Curiosity eventually gets the better of him and he's thrilling a comfortable enough buzz to finally ask, "What's it like?"

Sam sets his beer down on the bar and runs a finger through the condensation on the glass. "What's what like?" he asks, eyeing Dean carefully. "Being dead?"

Something seems to stick heavy in Dean's throat. He manages to swallow around it and choke out, "Yeah."

Sam shrugs "Do you really want to know?"

"Can you get drunk?" Dean asks.

Sam considers his drink a moment. "Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"It's more like… an echo."

"An echo?"

"I _remember_ what it's like to be drunk, but memories are different on this side," Sam says, again.

Dean wants to know but he also doesn't want to know. He chews his lip a moment. "How so?"

"It's like…," Sam starts, face twisted up. "It's like it's real. The memories. I mean. Like, I remember what being drunk is like and thus the sense memory attached to the beer makes me feel drunk. It's like reliving the memory of being drunk. Not just remembering. It's actually happening _again_ to me."

Well, that explains a lot, to Dean at least, about why ghosts are the way they are.

"How come you can keep them straight? I mean, the present and the past. Other ghosts can't."

Sam shrugs. "I dunno," he says, but Dean knows that tone of voice. Sam knows and he doesn't want to say.

Doesn't want to say, _demon blood, Dean_. _I'm part demon._

He's not even human in death.

That thought makes Dean get drunk. Again. So mind-blowingly drunk that Sam has to walk him back to the room and help him untie his shoes.

**XxX**

Sam's surprisingly good on a hunt. Dean won't send him to talk to witnesses – something about that makes him uneasy – but he's still fucking great with research.

He's still _there_ enough to be good in a fight and they take down a werecat in some little town in Texas. Seriously. Dean didn't know those things existed outside of D&D.

But Sam's still fast, still good with a right hook and his pistol. Still got his back, and that's what's important.

After the hunt is over, Dean has so much straight adrenalin punching through his system that he knows he won't be able to sleep anytime soon.

So he takes them for a cruise – like he used to when he'd just turned sixteen and could finally drive legal and Sam was twelve and still looked up to him before he got all grumpy and teenage. You know, the good memories that Dean likes to rest on when the world is wearing him out.

They end up on some back country road. The kind of place where the pavement is patchy and the mile markers are missing. It's dark and cool in the night and the moon is so bright she casts shadows long across the ground.

Dean is singing along to Steppenwolf – _I like to dream right between the sound machine. _And Sam smiling, tapping the beat along his knee with his fingers.

It's easy. Companionable. Comfortable.

There's some voice in the back of his head that rolls in with the bass and asks – _why wasn't it like this in life?_

But before he can delve into that abyss of a feeling, Sam suddenly sits up straight, eyes wide. "Dean," he says, looking at something off in the distance.

"Dean. Dean, stop the car," Sam demands.

"What? Dude?"

"Stop the car," Sam says again.

Dean pulls her over to the shoulder. Kills the engine. The radio goes with it and they sit in silence, the engine ticking, the headlights illuminating a stretch of empty road.

Sam moves so fast he forgets to open the door. Vanishes right through it.

Dean's stomach rolls again because, oh yeah, Sam still fucking dead and no amount of companionable moments is going to raise him from the fields in South Dakota.

Dean, however, has to open his door as he follows Sam into the dark, his heart thrumming hard against his ribcage as he realizes that Sam could just be _gone_.

Could decide that being a ghost isn't so awesome and vanish into the night in the Texas countryside and leave Dean alone again, for real this time.

For good this time.

But Sam doesn't vanish.

He stands still, forty some odd feet off the roadside. There is a slight breeze, it picks at Dean's clothing but Sam's not corporeal. His hair doesn't even ruffle in the air and it makes him look otherworldly between two small trees that do sway in the wind.

"Sam?" Dean asks, cautious. His voice catches along the rocks and bounces back at him.

Sam doesn't move, doesn't speak. He looks like he's absorbing moonlight, becoming iridescent in the night.

Dean stops a few feet behind him. "What do you see?" Dean asks, scanning the desert landscape and coming up empty.

Sam doesn't answer him at first. Then he says, "I don't know. I think… _shades?_"

"Shades?" Dean asks, racking his brain for the lore on that word and coming up dry. All he can think about are the annoying plastic blinds in that shitty motel on the beach in South Carolina.

"Images of the dead. But they're not ghosts. They're," Sam swallows. "They're on the other side," he says. "They've crossed over. They're images of souls in the underworld."

Dean doesn't know how to respond to that. Chews on the inside of his cheek. "What do they look like?"

"I… settlers? Maybe?"

Dean lets him look a little while longer. Sam's stiff, hands curled in at his sides. "Are you okay?"

That's when Sam finally looks at him and his eyes are full of tears. "No. Dean, I'm dead."

This terrible bubble of laughter quells in Dean's throat but he manages to swallow it. Of course Sam's dead, of course he is.

Dean once met a writer somewhere up in New England – this mousy woman who taught Creative Writing 101 and wrote some scary-ass short stories. The kind of shit that would keep Stephen King up at night and have the best hunters on the road leaving the hall light on.

Her lover had been eaten by a fucking Amphisbaena, which is why Dean ended up talking to her.

She sat on her vintage couch in her Victorian style home with picturesque draperies behind her, covered in her lover's blood. She looked like poorly made gothic art.

She was oddly calm for someone who had seen things that weren't supposed to exist, for someone who'd watched the love of her life ripped to pieces. She was crying, but it was more of a steady leak – a dripping faucet – than an endless wail.

She told Dean that all stories have an inevitability – something that will happen regardless to the character's attempts to prevent it.

She'd wiped a tear off her cheek and left a bloody smear in its place. "I tempted fate," she said. "With my stories. I tempted fate and that meant that this," she drew her hands across her lap to draw attention to the bits of flesh and bone scattered through the blood, "was the inevitability of my life. The inevitability of our story. Jackie and mine's love story was always going to end here. Because of who I am."

Standing out in that Texas field with Sam looking at ghosts that only ghosts could see, Dean finally knew what she meant.

That fire – all those years ago. The weight of his baby brother's little body in his arms and the smell of the smoke.

Yes, with that start to their story, Dean should've known that Sam's death was the inevitability of their story.

He should've known that the moment he admitted to himself that he loved him.

The moment that he knew Sam was the fixture on which all other points rotated, the constant, the steady. The beach on which his tide turned.

With a love like that, of course, of course he wouldn't get to keep him safe.

He killed the monster that ate that writer's lover and let her light the match that burned the creature's body.

It was the closest he could get to giving her a body to bury so she'd have her own form of closure, of peace.

But he did find her obituary three years later. Suicide.

The inevitability of her own story, perhaps. Not her love story: her life story.

Dean gets that now. Understands everything she said to him with a sudden clarity that it's borderline painful.

Sam sighs deeply, a clean sort of sound that brings Dean back to the present.

He wishes he could ask her what the inevitability of their story is now.


End file.
